Spellbound
by restlessxpen
Summary: Jacob has long since imprinted on Renesmee, but Leah has never been a believer in fate, and she's not willing to let an imprint get the best of her again. This time, she'll fight until she has what she wants and proves that freewill is fact, not fiction.
1. Chapter 1 Break this Curse

**Author Notes: **Hello, potential readers! If you've read any of my work before, you know that I am now pretty much exclusively a Leah/Jake shipper. However, the idea for this fanfic grew from one of my past one-shots, "In Love With Another," which was a Bella/Jake fic. I've always toyed with the idea of overriding an imprint though, and I wanted to play it through a little and see how it came out. Currently, this fic is labeled in-progress, because I think I might add a few more chapters to it, depending on how well it's received, so please let me know what you think in the form of a review!

* * *

I take Jake's hand in mine, turn it over, study the lines. I run my finger down the one that signifies his life line. It forks before it reaches the edge of his palm. I wonder what this means. I trace my finger down one line, reverse, and then take the other. I want to hold his hand up for him to see. I want to tell him, but I can't find the words.

_This is Renesmee. _I would point to the left line that becomes indistinguishable sooner.

_This is me. _I would be the line that forks to the right. It doesn't reach the edge of his palm, but it comes the closest. I don't find that too significant. Life is never certain, but I believe that I will be the one to outlast. I just hope I know what I'm outlasting, and that I won't be doing it alone.

_Pick,_ I want to say, but I say nothing, because Jacob is asleep, and I never beg anyway. I didn't ask for this. I never even implied that I might be interested in finding myself here, in his bed. But there is something incredibly satisfying in the feeling of being tangled in his bed sheets, of feeling the indignant line of cloth pressed to my back where the fitted sheet unhooked from the mattress and curled into itself under me. I won't do what I want to do: pull the sheets up to my nose, breathe him in. I am already more than familiar with Jacob's scent. It has long since become an intricate part of my life.

I tell myself that he wouldn't smell any different here anyway, even in the aftermath of sex. The cloying, underlying scent would still be him under that primal aroma of lust. He smells of pine and dirt. He's sleeping next to me. His smell is already everywhere. No need to turn my face to the pillowcase or pull the sheets to my nose. I push them to my waist instead, because I am not foolish or embarrassed or doubtful of my body. The ceiling fan twirls idly, pushing a warm breeze across my skin. It feels good, and I take my time enjoying it before I decide what to do next.

I decide not to decide yet.

I think, instead, of my body and Renesmee's and compare them. I feel the scales are weighted in my favor without much need for consideration. I am tall and slender, but not thin. I have definition, full hips and breasts. My skin is soft in places and calloused in others. I am comfortably and lightly weathered. I am natural, whereas Renesmee has always seemed manufactured. Willowy and thin and too perfect to be real. I have experienced every year of my age. She is a toddler in a twenty-six year old's body. She is Jacob's imprint.

I turn my head just enough to look at his face. Any lines that might have been there are smooth in sleep. He looks young again, like when we were kids. Before Renesmee was a glimmer in Edward Cullen's dead eyes. I could wish, for the millionth time, that the Cullens never existed, but this would be wasted breath and time. They are here. Our dormant genes were reawakened. Jacob's fate had raced to catch him.

I inhale and hold my breath until my chest aches, but even though the pain tells me that I am real and awake, I still don't believe in the concept of imprinting. I don't know what happened to Jacob when he saw Renesmee Cullen for the first time, but I don't believe that it is irreversible, and I don't believe that she is his life-mate.

I don't.

I don't.

I can't.

It is just a curse or spell like in fairy tales, broken by true love's first kiss. I roll onto my elbow and prop it underneath me so that I can lean over Jacob and press my lips to his. He doesn't so much as stir, but I feel his breath against my lips when I lean forward and taste his again. I close my eyes, press our lips together one more time, and will the spell to be broken. But it's not. And I know this even though he continues to sleep and says nothing to the contrary.

I know his eyes won't open and that he won't say, _Leah, I'm free,_ like I wish he would. I tell myself that it is only a matter of time. I will figure out how to break his chains. And they are chains. Imprinting is a curse, going against the natural way of free will. Werewolf genetics are forcing him to love someone not of his choosing, because I think now, if he could choose, he would choose me. Why else would he be here now, next to me?

I still don't know how it happened, but I know that this—_us—_is the natural progression of our lives, had the vampires never shown up. I never have pretended to understand the complex workings of an imprint, but, at first, I had taken it as fate. Renesmee had been born, Jacob had imprinted. He was not the first to do so, and he would not be the last, though I repelled the idea that it would ever happen to me.

The vampires came centimeters away from war, the war had crumbled before it had started, and then life had resumed. Several years had passed, Jacob being Renesmee's ever-faithful pup, and then—

And then he had shown up on my doorstep, struggling, at war with himself. I hadn't taken the time to notice how it had worn on him, the imprint. I hadn't taken the time to notice how tired he looked, how the fatigue showed in the shadows under his eyes and the slack around his mouth. Only then had it occurred to me how tortuously draining it must be to love someone that much with no relief.

No moments of selfishness. No room for resentment. No chance to question his fate, let alone challenge it. No arguments. He was on his knees in front of Renesmee, even when he was standing up.

He had stood on my porch that day, and he had look withered and used. I was the only one that hadn't imprinted in our pack. I was the only one that he could talk treason to. If he could have talked it, but he couldn't.

I don't know how I understood what he wanted, except maybe that I wanted it to. Maybe I had never imagined it with him, but I was tired of being the only one not to have imprinted, tired that it hung constantly in my face. Not only had I no imprint, but the only man I had ever loved had been taken by an imprint. I wanted revenge. I wanted to prove that imprints weren't real.

How else could I do this but to take someone else's?

_I'm so tired, _he had said, and he had staggered forward, and I had witnessed it in his eyes.

I was his act of defiance.

He was mine.

His feet had been weighted with the cement of the curse, like every step toward me was painful, so I had stepped out onto the porch, pressed my hands to his chest, pressed my lips against his, and hadn't stopped even though he'd cringed. I had remembered when we were younger, when we had both scoffed at imprints. Maybe all that moment had been was us proving that we wouldn't accept less than we wanted.

And it had grown from there. When he was supposed to be elsewhere, he was at my house. No one ever came to look for me, so no one ever found us. First the acts of defiance came only in us spending time together, the few brief kisses that we had shared. And then something had possessed me, and I had undressed him.

His body against mine so many times since then. Even when his gaze became distant, blurred, like he couldn't focus on me. Even when he growled and ground his teeth and fought to bring himself back to me.

_Leah, Leah, Leah, _he would say, as the imprint threatened to bind him, to gag him, to drag him out of my bed and back to her. Each time he said my name, his voice filled me. Even when it tried to curve into an _R _sound and say her name instead. He always fought his way back to me, to us, to freewill. Fighting it was exhausting. I could see it all over his face, but he kept coming back.

I took his hand each time.

_You'll break free, _I'd say, and his hand would go slack in mine before he managed to tighten his grip. If I keep telling myself he'll break free, he will. Maybe today. Maybe tomorrow. Maybe weeks from now, but he will. Jacob is mine. I will never say it out loud until he does, but I can already feel the spot the need has carved inside of me. Maybe it's more than need now.

I draw back and study his face. When did I start wanting it? Before or after that first kiss? I can hear the clock ticking in the hall. I wonder what time it is. The Cullen family camping trip could be wrapping up by now, and then how long would it be until Renesmee returned to Jacob's house? I feel myself frowning at the idea that I must leave, that these charades must keep going. Until I break the curse, he will not be able to leave Renesmee. How many times have I wondered if death might break it? What would happen if I killed Renesmee? The wolf inside me wants to. It would be easy. It would be nothing at all. But what would happen to Jacob?

Imprinting means that his life depends on hers. When did I become so weak that my life depended on his? I can't afford this feeling, but now it won't go away. I am in this now, my own form of imprinting, but I made this choice when I kissed him.

I swing my feet off the edge of the bed and push to my feet. This is the only movement that wakes Jacob up.

"Leah, where are you going?"

His voice is groggy with sleep. I hear him shifting behind me and rising from the bed as well. His bed, in his house, where Renesmee sleeps at night as well. How will he explain my smell here to her? Or how will he get rid of it before she returns? Maybe she has been made arrogant enough by the imprint that she will never suspect. Maybe no one believes that anyone can love me.

"Your Nessie will be home soon."

He makes a noise in his throat as I dress in my shirt, skirt, and underwear. The only thing I leave off is my bra. I push it under his bed with my toe.

"A souvenir to remember me by," I say.

I turn to see him staring at the end of the bed where I just hid my bra. His expression is conflicted. It's always conflicted. Like two different people are living there.

"I don't want you to go," he says.

I shake my head. "Part of you does."

"Not the part that's me."

I know that I sound cold, so I try to soften my words with a smile as he concedes that only part of him abhors me. But it's not strong enough to beat the side that just made love to me. I wonder how this would have happened without the imprint, how I could have come to stand in Jacob's bedroom and talk to him, calmly, while he stood stark naked.

I can't remember ever really wondering what Jacob looked like naked before then. I can't remember ever wanting to find out. He had been like my brother. An annoying, condescending one at that. But how quickly we had realized how well we could serve one another. Maybe we had always both been two broken souls. My gaze trails over him now, devouring what I see.

"Tell that part not to forget me."

I am not entirely teasing, but I say it like it's no big deal. It always seems like a risk. I'll return home, and he'll forget me. And I'll just be Leah Clearwater again, the bitter, angry woman that lives eternally alone. But Jacob has always been about freewill. He resented becoming a werewolf, resented being forced to fall in love. I don't think that he will give up on us any time soon.

His hands come up and grasp my arms. His grip is bruising, but I enjoy it, because I know that he's fighting Renesmee in his head. His lips are just as hard and unforgiving. They make me bump my head on the wall behind me.

"Renesmee."

I correct him. "Leah."

I circle him with my arms. My hands are on his back, and I dig my nails in a little harder than I mean to, but I want to make myself real.

"I'm Leah, you asshole."

He breathes out roughly against my neck.

"Leah," he says. "You are such a bitch."

I smile at the wall behind him. "Yeah, Black. At least you know me now.


	2. Chapter 2 Queen of Hearts

**Author Notes: **Thanks to the positive reception the fic has received and my own curiosity as to where it's taking me, I've decided to continue the story. =) It might not end up being too long, but hopefully it'll be worth the ride to you guys. Thanks for reading, and please leave me a review with your thoughts.

* * *

My mother calls to remind me that I'm to attend dinner at her place tonight, which is a shame, because I had thought of making some sort of an excuse to get out of it, but she caught me on the phone just as I was walking into my house, my head filled with so many other things that I floundered too long to object without being caught in my lie. It's not that I don't enjoy my mother's cooking—particularly when she fries fish and accompanies it with her usual fixings—but I liked it better when my dad was the one catching the fish, and not Charlie Swan. If I let myself consider it, I don't think that I really have anything against Chief Swan. It's not his fault that his mere existence in Forks spawned several life-changing events that mostly did me more harm than good.

Do I even want to try to count all of those scars?

Renesmee is only half of the iceberg—the part sticking out of the water that, while dangerous, maybe isn't all that bad, because you can see it coming and have time to react. And Renesmee is not really Charlie's fault anyway, but Bella is. Bella is a vampire magnet. I remember wanting to blame Bella for my first phase.

I remember wanting to blame Bella for my father's death.

Bella is a big domino that hits all of us lesser dominoes and knocks us down. All of her choices ripple out, as if she is really so important. But it doesn't matter now, because everything has come to pass—my father is dead, and Charlie Swan has long since moved in on my mother. I will sit through dinner with the pair of them, and I will try not to gag when he takes my mother's hand on the table, between their plates. I will try not to think that he is sitting where my father sits.

I think this will be another long night in the series of long nights that compose my life. Because I know I will need the short hour of peace to unwind, I go to the bathroom, strip from my clothes, and run a hot bath. I run the water so hot that I must gradually ease myself into the bathtub, inch of skin by inch of skin, shaving almost five minutes off of my hour of peace before I am all the way in.

I lather soap onto my arms and chest and then my legs. I rinse them off, thinking of how I am rinsing Jacob off as well. I will reapply him later, I know, as I touch the bruise on my left arm, surprised that it has not already faded. It doesn't bother me. The bruise is proof that the Jacob I know is still there. I can free him from Renesmee and the imprint curse.

()()()()

I know that this night is going to be more stressful than I had already imagined before I am even through the front door. I smell the vampires before I even step out of my car, but their presence is already extravagantly apparent before then, in the form of the Mercedes that I park behind. I somehow resist the urge to leave an ugly scratch as I pass by it, and I am as close to civil as ever when I walk into the house. It reeks of vampire. Their death-scent overpowers the smell of my mom's cooking, and my stomach turns, and I wonder just how much I'll be able to eat with them around.

Probably nothing at all, I decide, as I make my way to the dining room and see the people sitting at the table. Charlie, Bella, Renesmee, and...

Jacob.

I don't know why my heart gives a guilty lurch as his eyes skim over me. I don't feel guilty for what I've done, and I don't feel sorry for Renesmee Cullen. Maybe I am only concerned about how Jacob will deal with being in both my presence and Renesmee's at the same time. We have been avoiding it since our whole engagement started. Ideally, it would come later, when I brought the real Jacob back, and he was strong enough to tell her that he didn't love her. That time isn't now, when he can't even make eye contact with me.

Unfortunately, only two seats are left at the table. My mother will sit at the opposite end from Charlie, making them both the heads of the table. That leaves me the seat on Jacob's right side.

Right side. I think of the life line on his palm as I take my seat.

I wonder if I am the only one that notices the uncomfortable way he shifts, as if he would move away from me, but can't. I don't know why this makes me smirk, but it is a familiar expression to my face, and I don't think anyone finds it peculiar.

"Hello, Leah."

Bella's voice grinds into me, as it always has. I wonder if she ever considers not trying so hard to be pleasant. I hate how she sounds timid and friendly all at the same time. It would give anyone else the impression that she is a harmless, shy girl just looking to be accepted, or at least looked over without fuss. When really she is the orchestrator of mostly all the misfortune that has fallen on people in La Push.

"Bella," I say, trying to sound pleasant as well. "Renesmee."

Renesmee leans around Jacob just enough to offer me an overly-wide smile. Her teeth are straight and perfect and pristine white.

"Hey, Leah."

She blinks her wide, owl eyes that give me the creeps, and I, not for the first time, am given the impression that she knows all my darkest secrets, as if she can look straight through me. I remind myself not to get too close to her. I don't want her touching me and playing her mind games. I wonder how Jacob avoids it. Though I doubt she would be able to even begin to push her way through the jumbled mess that must be Jacob's mind these days. All the parts about me are probably drastically overshadowed by the imposing images of Renesmee, especially when I'm not around to make myself real to him.

I don't have a chance to acknowledge Charlie before my mom sweeps in with the food, but Charlie is never one for much conversation anyway, so I doubt he minds. He doesn't look at all bothered as he begins piling food onto his plate. My mother takes her place at the end of the table, next to me.

"I'm so glad you all made it," she says. " We don't get to spend enough time with you all. Look how fast you've grown already, Nessie."

I try not to flinch at the affection in my mother's voice, because I don't think it's just for Charlie's sake. I think that my mom might actually be growing close to his family as well. I suddenly feel outnumbered, and I wish that Seth had been made to come tonight. Despite having always been chummy with Bella, my brother always seems wary of Renesmee. I think those owl eyes must unnerve plenty of people.

"My parents don't really care for it," Renesmee says, but there is a smile on her face saying that she is thrilled.

"I barely had any baby-cuddling time before she was too big to even sit on my lap," Bella says, but she is smiling as well.

I look at Charlie, who is also smiling. Smiling from his granddaughter to Bella to my mom, and my mom is smiling too. I wonder why everyone is so obviously pleased that the demon-spawn sitting on Jacob's opposite side is a freakshow. She is an infant in an adult body.

"It always goes by so fast, so I can only imagine," my mom says. "One day, they're babies, and the next, they're married."

Married? I stagger over the word, looking toward my mom, who is now shooting a not-so-subtle look at Jacob. I turn to him, my mouth going dry. Renesmee laughs, places her hand momentarily over Jacob's on the table before raising it to brush some of her hair from her face.

"Oh, that's probably a little too fast."

"And creepy," I say.

I don't mean to say it out loud, but it comes out anyway. I feel my mom glaring into the side of my face, but no one else even acknowledges that I have spoken. It doesn't surprise me. No one is offended, because they are used to my negativity and are practiced at droning me out.

Jacob's reaction is all that matters to me. He is the only other person in the room that is as close to not smiling as I am. The expression on his face is more grimace than smile, as if he thought to laugh along with them, but someone had pinched him under the table. I can see the line of his jaw working, as if to keep him mouth closed.

Despite the fact that we are in a room full of people that are thrilled that Jacob is Renesmee's slave, I slide my hand under the table, place it on Jacob's leg, and squeeze. He glances in my direction and holds my gaze for almost a whole second. This means something to me.

"Not that we wouldn't be thrilled," Bella says, going on like I am nothing but empty air in this chair. "Jacob has always been like family to me anyway."

She is still smiling, encouraging. It's not the first time I have wanted to slap her. It is a not-so-subtle reminder that Jacob was once her slave as well. I wonder if the imprint started with her before transferring, more powerfully, to her daughter. Why else would anyone love her?

I want to tell her that she is living on a fool's hope, that Jacob is no more Renesmee's than he was ever hers, but I don't say anything, because I know, right now, all Renesmee would have to do is ask, and Jacob would say yes. I am filled with fear that that is exactly what is about to happen.

"Don't we all know?" I say, loudly, because I have got to claim the attention.

No one at this table expects me to be nice, so why should I be? Especially if I can keep Jacob that much farther away from Nessie.

"Leah!" My mother is now frowning, I know, without looking at her.

I am staring instead, at Bella, forcing smug smirk back onto my face. She is looking back at me with another one of her fake, misleading expressions. Hurt, confusion, and embarrassment. As if she doesn't know the crimes she's guilty of.

"I'm sorry?" she says.

I snort. "Who do you think you are? Queen of the Nile? Like you don't expect every dick in a five mile radius to lay down and die for you."

Down the table, Chief Swan's face is now the red color of embarrassment. He opens his mouth as if to say something, but he doesn't seem able to find the words. With a mild, soft-spoken daughter like Bella, I doubt he has ever heard a woman readily and openly discuss a man's anatomy. I feel Jacob tensing under my grip, and I wonder whose side his brain is currently on.

"I don't know what you're talking about."

"Like hell," I say. "Queen of the Nile? Queen of Hearts. You can't find enough of them to break to satisfy your attention-craving. Things getting boring with Eddie yet?"

I raise my elbows to the table, place my chin on my hands.

"Excuse me!" It is Renesmee's turn to join in. "Where do you get off acting like you know my mom?"

I don't look at Jacob, because I don't want to know who he is vying for now that I am directly engaging with Renesmee. For just a moment, this has escalated past my need for Jacob's heart. This is personal.

"How long have you been around? Three years, kiddo? I've known your mom longer, and she's a—"

"Leah." It is the first time Jacob has spoken, and, despite the fact that it is stern, I am glad that it's my name. "Can I speak to you outside, please?"

I roll my eyes for theatrics. "Whatever, Alpha Dog. It stinks in here anyway."

I push to my feet, toppling my chair over backwards. I hear my mom huff out an indignant breath as I stomp from the house, out into the yard. But I don't stop. I keep stomping until I'm in my dad's old shed, until I am inside and Jacob is in as well and shuts the door behind us. Slams it.

My feet leave the ground so fast that I think that he must have caved to the imprint, that he is fueled by the way I treated his lover, and that he is about to repay me for it. I grunt out a breath as I land on the only clear counter top, and my back bangs the old shelves behind me. Something glass rolls out and shatters on the floor.

He is between my legs, his face right in front of my face. Some part of him looks angry.

"Don't talk to her in front of me."

"I don't plan to go back in there," I say.

"Good."

He turns to leave. I touch his arm.

"Don't go back in there either."

"I have to."

The door opens, closes, and he is gone. So I follow him, and I go back inside too.


	3. Chapter 3 My Name

**JPOV**

Every time Nessie touches me, it's an effort to conceal my thoughts. It has never been easy, and now it's a hell of a lot worse. The only thing that saves me from being found out is that I'm so conflicted, it would be hard to decipher the jumble in my head if she did try to prod. I don't know if she's tried yet, but there were a few instances when she touched my hand or grazed my arm where she quickly removed the contact. I can only imagine the assault my thoughts must feel like. They are everywhere, and each one seems honed to a fine point. I can feel them all jabbing me.

_Who am I? _I clench my teeth and demand the answer every time things get hazy, which happens more and more often now. I'm not the same guy I was before. Before Renesmee. Hell, before _Bella_. I have to find that part of me again. I think it must be my soul that was taken from me, that missing part. That's what it feels like anyway. I'm just a shell right now, hollowed out of everything but Renesmee.

The only glimmer of hope—the only chance in hell—I have now to recover myself is Leah. My brain goes haywire when it forms her name. It didn't use to. Before that kiss. But now every time I even begin to think it, some part of the imprint starts throwing up walls, pumping me full of confusion and anger and even resentment. I can't even tell who it is that I'm resenting. Leah? I went to her first. This is just the imprint trying to confuse me.

It doesn't need much help. I _am _confused. Not only am I the slave of some emotional virus that has leached itself into my system, but I have turned to Leah for help. I never would have thought Leah would one day represent my salvation. But I had suffered in silence for as long as I could manage, considered just caving and being the good imprint puppet, and that was when Leah's name had formed with crystal clarity in my head.

Leah is the only person I know that has never believed in love. At least not since Sam. Since then, she has ground all notion of love into the dirt with the heel of her foot. It came to me all of a sudden that she would be the best person to help me break free. I have always known that Leah hates the imprint curse—probably more than anyone except me, because she has never been its victim.

I still can't believe how willing she is though. Or how willing I turned out to be, even underneath this avalanche of real and fake feelings and the imprint pounding in my skull that what I'm doing is worse than treason, worse than death. But some part of me, small but strong enough to withstand this agony, wants Leah.

I know this because I have kissed her, I have shared my bed with her. Even when my skull feels close to fracturing and my chest is overfilled with air that I can't breathe. If anything can save me fro this, it's Leah.

If anything can destroy me, it's Leah.

And this is very apparent tonight, because she has shown up to the dinner that I couldn't reasonable avoid going to. She has shown up, she has sat next to me, and she has purposely started an argument with my imprint. Basically clawing at her over my lap until the anger and confusion and resentment well up so fully that I have to make her leave the house before I phase and find out who I would attack.

I don't want to know. I don't want to know.

So I leave Leah in the storage shed, go back to the house to make excuses for her, and sit down with those excuses on my lips only to see her sitting right back down next to me. I look at her in disbelief.

_Are you batshit crazy?_

"Sorry everyone," she says, her voice high and fake-cheerful. "You know me, I get so overly-emotional."

"Yeah, we know you," Bella says.

I glance in her direction to see that Bella looks more like a vampire than I have ever seen her look before. I actually forget that she is one, even now when she is the only one sitting at the table with nothing on her plate. Her golden eyes are looking at Leah without blinking.

"That's right," Leah says, and I think she might be grinding her teeth. "Fortunately, Jake force-fed me my happy pills out there."

"The night might still be salvaged then. Fortunately," Renesmee says.

Leah doesn't reply but gives one, barking laugh. I don't know why this triggers the reaction it does, but I lock every muscle in my body to keep myself in place, because I can feel the anger coming again. Some little voice inside my head is whispering.

_A threat. She's a threat. Protect Renesmee._

I tell myself that Leah is not a threat, that my body is a shield between them, but the voice is still growling, and it's not my voice. It's the voice that is always there now.

_Mine, mine, mine, _it growls every time I look at Nessie. Protectiveness wells in my chest. All at once, I'm her slave again. Each _mine_ echoes over the sound of Nessie's heartbeat. I can hear it, the _wub-wub _of her pulse. It's like my own is trying to match the pace. I know that if it stops, mine stops. I know that everything in my world depends on it. I want to wrap her in my arms, shield her. I want to melt right into her.

"Are you that hungry?" Leah's voice draws me back to myself.

I realize that I've bent the handle of the fork in my right hand. I didn't know that I'd even picked up the fork. I offer a sheepish smile to everyone that I hope they take as sincere.

"Yeah, I guess I am."

"Well, let's eat then," Sue says, and I see she's no longer scowling, but she shoots Leah apprehensive glances every now and then.

I fill my plate and eat mechanically. I don't look at what I'm doing. I just scoop something onto my fork, insert it into my mouth, chew, swallow, and repeat. No one talks while we eat, and I imagine it's because of Leah's outburst. Bella's putting off an aura of annoyance, and Renesmee isn't far behind. Since I'm sure she can sense this as well, Leah eats her meal like it's the best she's ever had.

()()()()

"You didn't take long to bust out of there."

I am panting, because I ran here, to Leah's house. But maybe I ran all over La Push first, like distance can outrun an imprint. Maybe I'm not even just panting from that, but from the exhaustion of leaving Renesmee behind. An imprint isn't just emotional, it's physical pain. My whole body aches being away from her, and half of me is angry that I left her sleeping, alone, in my bed to come here. The other half of me doesn't give a shit. I didn't pick Renesmee.

But I can pick Leah.

She stands in the doorway, in a skimpy nightgown, like she knew I'd show up here. She leans against the frame on one arm, the other has a wine bottle in its hand. I look down at it and then back up at her, but her gaze is as focused and unclouded as ever. If she's drunk, she's good at hiding it.

"I'm not," she says, "but I'm on my way. Want to come in?"

_No. _The answer tries to seize me in place. Especially because I can practically see through the nightgown she's wearing, and that tiny, rebellious part of me wants to react. And it's my damn body, so why shouldn't I?

It's my body. It's my body. It's mine.

I step into her house, bumping her shoulder as I force my way in. Not because she's trying to block me, but because I'm trying to block myself. I grind my teeth together, because it pisses me off that this is not completely my choice. She snickers and stumbles back a step from where I grazed her, and then leans forward to grab the door and swing it shut.

The door shutting behind me makes my whole body go rigid, so I take the wine bottle from Leah's hand and start gulping. Leah isn't laughing now when I hand the bottle back to her basically empty.

"You need that to be with me?"

"No," I growl. "Just cut me some slack, all right? This isn't easy, and you aren't making it any easier. What were you doing tonight, anyway, trying to fight with her in front of me?"

Leah's mouth is slowly edging toward a frown that looks dangerous, but there is still that angry side of me, and the warm burn of alcohol can't shut it up.

"I was trying to see who would show up. Dr. Jekyll or Mr. Hyde."

I snort. "Are you trying to kill me?"

"No, I'm just trying to wake you up."

Part of me wants to shake her. I don't know if it's because I'm mad that she doesn't understand that I can't just snap my fingers and be free, or if it's because I am equally as frustrated that it won't work that fast.

"Give me some time."

"How much? Until she starts wanting even more of you? You heard the talk tonight. Marriage. And then maybe babies. Growing old together." Leah is baring her teeth.

"It's not going to be like that," I say.

"Isn't it? Would you be able to say no?"

"I'm here right now, aren't I?" I'm starting to shout.

She whips it back at me. "_Are_ you?"

My need to prove her wrong about my lack of self-control is so overpowering that it must make my imprint instincts stumble over themselves, because I'm the one making the move toward her. I stomp forward, grab her by the arms, and slam her ass down on a tiny end table just inside her front door. She gives a little squeak of surprise, as, for the first time, I initiate the kiss. And I'm not gentle. The anger and fight inside me are in this kiss, because I'm struggling with both on the inside as my heart starts to incinerate itself over me unfaithfulness.

I taste the wine on Leah's lips, so I part them to taste it on her tongue. Her moan rolls through me. Her teeth nick my bottom lip, and things get hazy. It's lust and need and my reality splintering.

This is Leah, I tell myself. This is Leah.

No one else feels that firm under my hands. My hands that, even without her usual guidance, have slid from her sides, up over her stomach and breasts. She arches into me, and I nearly break the end table she's on trying to get to her.

"Nes—"

Leah bites down hard on my lip, and I choke on the breath filling my lungs.

"Leah," she hisses.

I'm panting again. Because I want Leah. Because my brain is trying to associate want with Renesmee. Leah's breasts are in my hands. I can feel her heart beating. My brain tells me it's not the right heart, but it is.

I know it is.

Leah's hands are on my chest, and she shoves me so hard that I stumble back three steps, and she has room to climb off the end table. Her nightgown has ridden up and the line of her underwear is crooked, but her hair is glossy and straight on her head. I want to put my hands in it and mess it up, even though she looks angry now.

"Damn it, Jacob. I'm Leah."

She grabs the hem of my shirt and jerks it roughly up and over my head. Her lips are on mine again, and I'm dragging in air through my mouth that's probably hers, telling myself that this is Leah. I want Leah. I want to be me again. Even if it's kind of fucked up that I think the old me would have fallen for Leah. The thorn in my side for so long.

I think maybe I would have ended up wanting her anyway, especially when she shoves me back so hard against the wall that I think the plaster cracks. I release an almost hysterical laugh until she wraps one leg around my waist, and I forget what was so damn funny.

"My name."

"Leah," I say.

And she snakes her hand down into my pants, and I forget my _own_ name.

"Leah."

Her teeth graze my jaw. Did I just whimper? Her hand closes around me, and all I know is that I want more of her, and I know that she is Leah, and this is what I want. Who is Renesmee? I forget.

We're sliding to the floor, and she's already maneuvered me out of my pants, and I haven't resisted in the slightest. She is straddling me. She is closing around me. She is damn near bliss.

And I am Jacob Black again, for however long this lasts.

()()()()

**LPOV**

He sleeps after, and I am wide awake, because my head is on his chest, and his arm is still wrapped around my waist. I'm listening to his heart when he starts to mumble.

He breathes my name in his sleep, "Leah."

I am done for.


	4. Chapter 4 Let the Wolf Speak

**Author Notes: **This is where I'm really going to emphasize the M rating. Lemons abound, readers. ;) Also, sorry I haven't managed to respond to all of the reviews yet. I'm in the process of also finishing a paper for class, so the time I can squeeze in, I use for writing on the fic itself. Just know that I love all of you, and I love all of your reviews, and you have made Spellbound well worth pursuing!

* * *

We avoid phasing with the rest of our pack so that they can't read our thoughts, but I have never been so desperate to be the wolf. I want a few hours of oblivion in the woods. I want to run and feel the wind through my heavy fur and know that I am real, and free, and I can do what I want and feel what I want for whoever I want. I want the same for Jacob.

His eyes are closed, and his breathing has long since gone slow and deep. It's only been twenty minutes since he fell asleep, but I haven't stopped looking at him. He has the faintest frown line between his brows, and I wonder when it first began to develop. Maybe when Bella came back to Forks. Maybe when Bella got married. His imprint on Renesmee is the easy answer, but I know it started before that. I had my fair share of problems going on, but I watched him. In the pack, his thoughts had become even louder than my own.

I could only imagine what they would be like now.

I turn my head as something begins tapping against the window and see that it's raining. I wonder what time it is, knowing that we've let it become later than we should have. What had he said to get away from Renesmee, and how much time would it allow him before he needed to go back? A large part of me doesn't care.

Let them find out.

I don't want to wake him up, so I don't. I want him to stay here in my bed, wrapped in my sheets. I want Renesmee to fade into oblivion. I want to freeze this moment, cocoon this house in some protective shell, and have Jacob for myself. Because I know I can't, and because knowing I can't makes it harder to breathe, I finally slide away from Jacob. When my feet touch the floor, I keep walking. I need to clear my head.

It is late. The probability of anyone seeing me is minimal. But I don't really care if I'm spotted. All I care about is how infuriating it is that I can't break Jacob free. What else do I have to do to win this fight? Again, it crosses my mind that I could kill Renesmee, but this is my angry, impulsive side talking, and I know it's not the right answer. Not the right way.

There is a sliding glass door in my room. I push back the curtains to expose just enough of it to unlock it and squeeze out. The door faces my backyard. The grass is tall, because I haven't badgered Seth to mow it in awhile, but I never really come out here for long anyway. It is bordered by the woods, and so I walk straight through my yard until I reach the trees. The brief moment before I duck into them, my hot skin finds some relief under what's become a modest downpour of rain. It soaks through my hair, and I can feel it sliding down my arms and dripping from my fingertips.

Part of me wants to stop and stand there in the open, naked and drenched. Part of me wants to turn my face up toward the black sky and scream while my bruised skin from Jacob's touch already starts healing. Like he was never there.

When I hit the line of trees, I start running. It doesn't bother me to run barefoot. The bottoms of my feet are rough and calloused, and I barely feel it when I step on something sharp, like my skin is already tough animal hide before I'm even the animal. But everything else, I can feel: the slap and claw of branches, the tug of roots that would have caught me up when I was a kid, but not now. There is nothing I'm more sure of than my legs beneath me. They won't drop me. I won't stop running.

How can I be so close to having what I want and still not have anything at all?

Lightning stabs, jagged, through the sky, and, for the briefest moment, things around me are thrown into eerie silhouettes. The thunder follows, and I wonder if Jake will sleep through it. I wonder if he'll still be at my house when I get back. Probably not. He can only resist the imprint for so long. He'll go back to Renesmee. He'll wake up to her in the morning.

I push myself to run harder, so much harder that I am teetering between running faster than ever before and falling on my face. Some small center of balance holds me upright, so I keep running, because I am so sick of so many things about our werewolf heritage. But mostly it's the imprint, of course, which has stolen so much from me. First Sam, and now Jacob, and I think Jacob might actually be worse.

Because there is still a chance with Jacob. If only I could figure out how to shatter those chains. My lifelong motto of always getting what I want seems to be crumbling underneath me, and it's pissing me off. And making me desperate. I won't lose again. I won't be Lonely Leah, the spinster hag that remains eternally alone.

Jacob is mine. We are the natural pairing. Not weak, pitiful Bella. Not Renesmee, half-breed vampire, enemy of our ancestors. If vampires didn't exist, Jacob and I together would. And I'm not going to let an act of chance determine my life.

And all at once, I am angry. I'm angry at Bella, at the Cullen freakshow household, at the ancestors that passed down the werewolf DNA, and even at Jacob, for being too weak to fight all of it, when he clearly doesn't want it any more than I do.

And I'm the wolf just as suddenly, without making the conscious decision to phase. I barely miss a stride, transitioning from two feet to four. The wolf and I are that seamlessly together now, like we barely exist separately, like the slightest inclination is the only thing that keeps me human. She is my curse and my freedom, and all I want tonight is that freedom. I want to run and think of nothing else but what things smell like and how they taste and which direction I should head in.

But it's not going to happen. I know it immediately.

Jacob followed me. He must have phased at the same time, or surely he would have caught up to me running as a human, but I don't see him yet, even though I can smell him and hear him.

_There you are._

The affection he feels, swells through me, but it's not complete. He is relieved to have found me. He is comforted by my presence. He has been craving the freedom of his wolf as well, but we are not alone. Physically, yes, but his thoughts are jumbled. I am blindsided by the number of things that come at me at once, and I'm forced to stop running, because I feel too much.

Because my vision is filled with one face that is blurring heavily into another—both fighting for dominance. My face and Renesmee's. Both are stark opposites, both are riddled with similar and greatly different feelings. And Jacob is so conflicted that he can't completely control which ones he projects outward.

_Jacob, calm down. _I try this to no avail.

Our faces, hands, lips. There is an image of Jake and I together, but I can only see myself, as he saw me. One of his hands is in my hair, and I had realized then that it was trembling, but I see that it is now. I feel his frustration as his muscles tense to pull it away, but he doesn't want to. He doesn't want to, doesn't that matter? I feel his annoyance, the horrible anxiety riding up his spine, the frustration that he is only partly in control of his thoughts and feelings and actions. He wants me. He wants me. He wants...

Renesmee.

She is sleek, pale skin, like porcelain. He thinks when he touches her that she might break. So he must be careful. He must touch her gently. He must not grip too tightly. And this is difficult, because, when he smooths her bronze curls from her face, all he wants to do is take her. When she kisses him, it's all he can do not to take more. He sleeps rigidly on his side of the bed at night. He clamps one hand onto the side of the mattress. He waits until she's asleep, and then he leaves the room to find solace elsewhere. Somewhere where he can feel what he wants. Somewhere where he is not in danger of losing himself.

I feel the way his heart hurts, the way it squeezes his chest.

I turn in the dense midst of trees and shrubs where I stopped running, and I see Jacob emerging in my line of view.

_It's horrible, _I say. _Stop it. I can't take it._

There is a feeling at the pit of his stomach that flourishes upward when he sees me. It eases the ache in his chest, because he starts aching in other places. Maybe he aches all over, like his body recognizes mine as his mate but is helpless to completely acknowledge it.

_It's a prison in here, _he says. _Sometimes, I think I might go crazy. _

I can't breathe for the thoughts he's pressing into my skull. I know what he means by crazy. I feel crazed to get away from this. I feel like three people squeezed into one body: I am me, I am Jacob, I am whatever that horrible thing is that lives inside of Jacob. I whine despite myself.

Jacob releases a frustrated growl that hums deep in his throat.

He looks away from me, and I hear his thoughts again: He has to go back. He must go back. Renesmee might wake up. She might realize he's not there. He has to be there for her. How could he live with causing her even a moment's apprehension? How can he be deceiving her now? How could he have dared to be with me? Who am I? I am no one. Renesmee. Renesmee is—

The anger comes back, and it's my turn to growl, but it's not low and frustrated. I peel back my lips to expose my teeth. It is louder and angrier.

_I'm Leah. _I push this at him as hard as I can. _I'm Leah, and you want me. You want me, Black. For fuck's sake, are you no stronger than this? What do I have to do? What do I have to do to get rid of her? _

He is defensive, immediately, as I threaten Renesmee in the slightest. But there is something else there, a small voice that is almost suppressed.

_Do you think I want this? _

_ Don't you? You aren't even trying._

His growl, this time, is like mine. Lips peeled back, long teeth exposed.

_You have no idea what this is like! I can't have anything to myself. It's whatever—It's whatever _it _wants. _

_ But what do _you _want? _I snarl back, and I act next without thinking. I think of every time we've ever been together, and I shove it at him—all of it, at once, as hard as I can. Us. Skin on skin, lips on lips, his fingertips touching me, my hands on him. The first time. The last time. The noise he pants into my ear when he's there, when he comes.

And Jacob responds to it. I feel his confusion at first, and then that feeling, at the pit of his stomach, that flourishes upward. The lingering image of Renesmee in his vision goes to static, and he comes at me, and I don't realize what he's doing until I'm flat on my back. When he phases, I phase to, without question or thought, like our wolves communicated silently and decided we had to finish this as ourselves—human.

Jacob's mouth comes down hard on mine, bruising my mouth, and I try to give a growl of protest, but he swallows it as he parts my lips with his tongue. I know immediately that there is nothing gentle or romantic, or even emotional, about this. This is primal. We are not testing the boundaries of how far Jake can go. We're taking what we want.

I arch my hips as he grips them in his hands, his fingers digging down harder than really necessary, but I barely feel them for a second before he splits the world into by ramming his glorious dick into me. There is no other adjective for this action. He is rough and apologetic, and I nearly bite my tongue off as he pushes me a whole three inches across the ground, knocking my head against the base of a tree.

"Ow," I protest, but he's laughing.

And there's something in the look in his eyes that shuts up the nasty remark I was preparing. He pulls out, rolls me over onto my stomach, and pushes in again. It brings me up onto my knees as a gasp ripples through me, and I try to find some even ground in the world he's disrupted. But he won't let me go. He has my hips in his hands still, and he pulls me against him as he rocks back. And, Christ, it almost hurts, but I'm going cross-eyed because it feels so _good. _Because I am being used the way he wants to use me.

This is Jacob, and I am not Renesmee.

"Jacob," I say, as I all but go face-first into the dirt when he starts to pump himself in and out of me.

"What?" His voice is rough, edged with something dark and dangerous, and I want whatever it is.

"Why—Why have you never done it like this before?"

He leans over me, his teeth catching my shoulder and sending a hard shiver straight down my spine as he drags them down across my back, sucking in a circle of skin that he also bites, less than gently, before he pushes farther into the glorious land of my every orgasm. I feel something explode to life inside of me, like it was just waiting for Jacob to find it.

All the fatigue I felt, all the anxiety, dries up like a puddle in the desert. And there is only one thing I care about: Jacob. And now I know I can have him. He's here.

"You're in my head. I could hear your voice."

Because of the wolf? But I thought that our wolf sides were the problem. I want to ask another question, figure out how to bring him completely back to me, but I forget to keep caring as his hands come around and squeeze my breasts. He uses them to anchor himself, and I feel like a ragdoll, but it's almost the best feeling in the world, because it is the most pleasure I have ever gotten just from doing nothing.

"Jacob."

"Shut up, Leah."

I'm not even angry.

"Don't leave me in bed alone like that again," he says.

"Huh?" I have lost the ability to compute sentences.

I almost come back to my senses as he pulls out, and I immediately yearn for him, but then I feel his right hand sliding down my stomach, coming to a stop between my legs. He pushes two fingers in to the second knuckle, and I am in his palm. My body is under his. He has me caged. I am his. I will do whatever he wants.

His fingers move, coaxing me, and I can feel myself squeezing around him in response, and just this has me gasping for breath.

"I know what I want," he says, gruffly. "Out here, it's just you and me. There is nothing else. I want you. Don't leave me again."

"You're the one that will leave," I say between ragged breaths.

"Not tonight."

I want that to be enough, but I don't have the willpower to ask for more as he numbs me with too much feeling. His fingers slide out so that he can fill me with his dick again. I moan in approval. His chin comes down to just above my shoulder. His lifts his right hand where I can see it and places the two fingers that were just inside me into his mouth. He licks them clean, and I am helpless to do anything but watch and think that he is tasting me.

Jacob is tasting me everywhere.

He sucks my earlobe between his teeth, and the world blurs. Then he just presses his lips against my ear and says, "Mine."

I don't need anything else.

At least, not right now.


	5. Chapter 5 If It Were Only Just a Dream

**Author Notes: **Sorry, once again, that I haven't had time to reply to reviews. I've got a packet that's due that I've been working on, and I've just narrowly squeezed in time for this chapter, which is why it's short-ish. I always feel like I've written a ton, but it looks so short on the page! Anyway, I just didn't want to leave you guys without a little something. Still, I truly, deeply appreciate the reviews and support, and I am glad that you guys are enjoying Spellbound. If you have a Twitter account, I do encourage you to add me restlessxpen. I make sure to tweet about updates and my schedule so you won't be left hanging, wondering what's going on with me. Having said that, as always, you readers are great!

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I am running miles to outdistance them, but they just keep coming. Swarms of them, and they're all draped in black like bats, but I can see the red of their eyes. Predator eyes. That color of red, because they drink human blood. I want to know little to nothing of vampires, but this is one fact that I do know. Red is bad. Gold is tolerable. They're flanking me from all sides, and I can't outrun them. I can feel my human legs going to jelly, spent, and, for some reason, I can't phase. The wolf won't come, and I am lost without her. My last sliver of pride keeps me from screaming, but there is a large part of me that thinks that, if I had breath enough left in my lungs, I would go ahead and scream anyway. I don't know who I would scream for. The pack? My mother? Jacob?

My mother is helpless, but I can't help but to think that she would be a better pick in this scenario than Jacob. Why? Why? Because—

Because Jacob is borderline traitor. Has always been. I had never imagined he would pick anyone over Bella Swan—Cullen or not—so how can I believe that he might choose me over Renesmee? This is Renesmee's kind. Would he kill them to save me?

My breath is wheezing in and out of my mouth, and it feels like pure fire burning my throat, but the noise isn't loud enough to drown out the hissing sound that's quickly filling the forest around me. Dozens of red eyes are hissing at me. Every once in awhile, I feel sharp nails scrape my back, but I don't stop running. Somehow my numb legs keep going, and I think that somehow, because of some stroke of dumb luck, I might actually survive when a house surfaces in the distance.

It reflects the night sky. It is made of so many windows.

I want to panic, because I recognize the house, and it offers no sense of comfort, but it is the only place I have left to run. If I don't go inside, my chances grow slimmer by the second. It is my last chance, and any chance is better than none. I don't want to die yet. There is someone I need to see. Someone I need to convince.

I reach the house just far enough ahead of my pursuers to make it inside. I slam the door behind me, slide several different locks into place. The answering noise sounds like someone playing a drum, and it takes me a few moments to realize that it is the sound of the vampires bouncing off the glass. The sight of their bodies bouncing harmlessly away would have been funny and bizarre and may have provoked the smallest, hysterical laugh, but I feel no humor standing in the dark fortress of the Cullen house.

Only fear.

There is nothing welcoming or safe about being here. It is pitch black save for what light comes through the windows, causing large chunks of the room to be in shadow while other little circles are bathed in cold, dim light. There is a bookshelf, the marble bust of a man, and the glistening black of the piano.

The piano is next to a window. There is someone sitting at it. A man. Someone else leaning against it. A woman. Neither are faced in my direction. Both have their heads bowed, and the man's fingers are resting idly on the ivory piano keys. He makes no move to turn to acknowledge me, no move to play music. Both stand as if in a trance. I can see only that they are breathing by the way their bodies move, but I don't know why they bother. I recognize them as Bella and Edward Cullen.

Outside, the moon shifts, and other parts of the room come into focus. I see the rest of the Cullens: Carlisle, Esme, Alice, and the others. They are looking out the window on the opposite side of the room. None of them face me. None of them move either. I want to say something. I need someone to make a sound before I go crazy.

"Jacob," I say, despite all reason.

The only answer I receive is pain. Sudden, excruciating. I gasp and stagger forward, as if to break away from whatever it is that hurts, but I can't break free. The moment of surprise that fogged my brain unclouds as the pain ribbons across my back, through my chest. I realize that its source is my shoulder, and I lift my hands to push whatever it is away. One hand meets flesh, the other catches in downy hair. I shriek, pushing harder, turning my head just enough to see Renesmee's face. Her teeth are buried in my shoulder. Her face is already soaked with my blood.

I feel my stomach roll once, hard. The world threatens to upend itself under the white-hot pain. Black dots pop across my vision. I push against her again, yank at her hair, but she doesn't move. She is anchored in, and now the rest of the Cullen's smell blood. They turn their heads, their red eyes glistening in the darkness. The hissing starts again. My next scream is a gurgle.

I can feel Renesmee sucking the life out of me. My body's turning cold as my blood drenches the front of Renesmee's shirt, still hot. I know I must only have a short span of time left, but I can't go like this, so I struggle to remove Renesmee from my shoulder even as the other Cullen's turn and move to join her. Edward takes my right arm, Carlisle takes the left. The others line up on either side of them, and I see my inevitable, short future: a meal for the Cullen's. I thrash, even though their grip is like steel, like fighting against solid rock.

I thrash until a little more moonlight filters into the room, and I see a body on the floor in front of me. I see Jacob's body. I see Jacob's unmoving body in a pool of blood. I see his glazed eyes focused on the ceiling, and I see all the places where the Cullen's bit him.

I release a pitiful, wounded animal sound.

()()()()

I'm breathing too hard when I wake up, and I can't get enough air. I open my eyes and realize that this is because my nose is practically in the dirt. I'm lying face-down on the forest floor, inhaling dirt and bugs and God knows what. When I try to move, all I can do is release a grunt. My body is exhausted, worn. My shoulder is aching, and every part of me feels overused. I can't find the will to pick myself up, because it's a glorious sort of exhaustion, like I'm spent in the best way. Nothing like how I felt in the dream.

Except for my shoulder. Which, while it doesn't feel like it's been ripped in half, is throbbing. It's seems like a stupendous effort to wedge my arm underneath me in order to reach my hand over my shoulder. It feels bruised under my fingertips, slightly indented. Did Jacob bite me? The idea sends a warm flush through my body, ridiculously enough, and it is the need to locate the source of my desire that has me rolling onto my back. I blink at the sunlight trickling down through the branches of the trees. Mostly, I didn't expect Jacob to still be there when I woke up, and so I am surprised to find him sitting there, watching me.

And I'm ridiculously happy to see him there. The longing that overcomes me just to close the distance between us is equally as surprising and strong. I sit up, glorying in the way everything aches with the movement, so taken by the feeling that it's a full minute before I realize that Jacob looks slightly haggard, like his face is shadowed, and it doesn't appear as if he got much sleep, if any.

"What is it?"

I don't understand how he could look so distraught when every fiber of my being seems to be sighing with relief and pleasure. I have never felt more complete or whole. The gap in my life from Sam seems like a distant, surreal memory. With Jacob here, I don't need anything else. I want to slide over and curl into him, skin against skin, as both of us are still naked.

"I—I marked you," he says, at length.

I squint at him. "Marked me?"

He doesn't say anything for a few minutes, but he's looking at me like he's studying every inch, and I am actually content to just sit there in silence, letting his gaze travel up and down. I think it's clear now: I'm his, and he is mine. We came together in the woods, and he was still here when I woke up. That means something, and I know he knows it too. I think of my shoulder, how it aches, how he must have marked me there. I lift a hand and rub it again.

"Not that," he says, glancing at my shoulder.

The faintest of smiles flickers over his mouth. So he _did _bite me.

"Then what are you talking about, Black?"

I smile back, in a vain attempt to get him to smile again. I want him to smile. I want him to want me like this. I feel ridiculous and liberated at the same time.

"When I knocked you down, I was—I was still the wolf, for just a second. I marked you, Leah."

Is this the difference that I feel? The possessiveness? It was there before, but _now_? Now it feels different. It feels like more. I frown at him, because I don't understand. What just happened? And is it any different than the Imprinting virus that I'm trying to destroy.

"I didn't mean to," he says, quietly, as if to explain.

"What did you do?"

I don't like that he sounds apologetic.

"I—I dominated you."

Because I don't know what else to do with my hands, I cross my arms over my chest.

"What does that mean?"

"You're mine," he says.

It's almost a growl, territorial. My own chest squeezes in response, heartbeat hammering, but I'm angry too. Why does this sound like a bad thing? I don't want to know.

I don't want to know.

But still I have to ask.

"And your imprint?"

He looks away, and it's the only answer I need as he scowls at the trees. I think I might know half of what he feels. I feel taken and used, but part of me wants to be taken and used. I want him, but I don't want him like this.

"So, what? You love Renesmee, and I'm—I'm dessert? I'm on the side?"

Jake looks back at me, his expression somewhere between pained and desperate.

Desperate for what? For me to understand? Or for me to be his willing affair on the side? No. I want all of Jacob. This isn't how this was supposed to go. And, worse, I don't understand how we got here. I didn't know that we could mark our mates. Is that what happens to those that don't imprint? But Jacob imprinted. So it's some cursory instinct still left in our genetics.

"No," he says, "I don't want that."

But his voice his strained, and I don't completely believe him. I want to be even angrier, but part of me believes that he didn't know this was possible either. I want to phase into the wolf and run for it, but what if I do, and he does to? I don't want to know what his thoughts sound like now that he's marked me and imprinted on Renesmee. I don't want to know who he wants more. I need some space and time to think.

Time to think of how to get past this. Just one more obstacle in my way.

My damn luck.

"But it's still not your choice."

I watch the muscles in his jaw work. They flex, clenching. I know he must want to deny what I'm saying, but he can't, because it's the truth. Some part of me tells me that I should be happy with this small success, that Jacob has marked me and some innate part of him wants me, but this isn't victory. This is only another obstacle. And all of last night is suddenly soiled.

"I have to go." I push, shakily, to my feet.

"No."

His response is so immediate and reflexive that I almost warm to the demand. My knees want to buckle, plop me right back onto the ground as Jacob commands. I'm his mate. I'm _his. _

But no. No, not like this.

"Renesmee's probably wondering where you are. She's probably worried. Do you want her to be worried?"

Even though I don't want it to, the question has the desired effect. Jacob becomes solid stone as he tries to work through his imprint and what he really wants. His imprint is always so strong, and I have just reminded him that he spent the night away from Renesmee, that he, even now, is most likely causing her distress as she wonders where he might be. I see all the muscles in his body tense as he tries to hold himself in place, and I know how much of an effort that must be.

"You're still more hers than mine," I say. "We'll talk later."

I run, and Jacob doesn't chase. I'm glad, this time. I don't want him to follow me. I need to break free of this clawing feeling of need. Like I enjoy being owned by someone else. Well, not owned exactly, but—well—is there a better word? I have to get away to think. Is it a step forward, or a step back? There is only one sure way to clear my mind, so I head for the cliffs.


	6. Chapter 6 I Fling Myself Onto Rocks

**Author Notes: **So sorry this has taken so long to post! I've had a very busy month. Honeymoon, residency, yada yada. I've been on the go or otherwise bogged down with other junk so much that anything I would have tried to write would have been garbage. This chapter is a little short, but I wanted to get something out there for you guys while I have the breather to do so. Again, I'm so sorry about slow updates, but my grad school stuff is really starting to pick up, and I'm working on getting published work out there, despite how much I enjoy writing fanfic. All your wonderful reviews definitely keep me going on the site and with this story, so please feel free to leave me some! I will love you for it, even if I don't get a chance to reply. I read all of them. And thank you to everyone that already has reviewed and is keeping up with the story. You're all fantastic!

* * *

There is no equivalent to jumping off of a cliff, though maybe I am flinging myself from the lip of it—desperate to get away, to feel anything but the sense of being half-used.

_Marked me. He marked me._ I take it with me when my feet leave the ground. The key is to jump before you have time to think it through, so I don't even stop running. I just go until there's nothing left to run on, and then I'm falling, and there's nothing with me but the wind.

There is always a moment of bright, piercing fear, but that brings the adrenaline, and, with it, the knowledge that I'm alive, and that's the only thing that matters. I'm alive. I want to keep living. I just jumped off a cliff and now my heart is in my throat, and it's too far away from me to feel the pain, so there is a few seconds of mercy before I find the sea. I go feet first, and it's like sliding through air that lifts me right back to the surface when I kick my feet. I let the wave that's coming fall over my head, submerge myself awhile longer.

My pursuit of the beach isn't hurried. I surface, swim, go under with the next wave. I let it roll me over and then start again: surface, swim, let the next wave take me. I'm being push-pulled to the shore. I think about letting it take me out. I think about never going back. The moment of adrenaline is gone, and the agony is coming.

This is much worse, being marked. This is desperate want with no fulfillment. I want Jacob. When I'm close enough to the shore to stand, I walk in toward the beach with my arms wrapped, clutching my own waist, smelling him. I don't know if his smell is on me, or if I can simply still smell him from here while he is somewhere up on that cliff, lingering where we mated. But that's not likely. By now, he's on his way back to Renesmee.

I stumble now that the waves are less kind and knocking me toward the shore. I am waist-deep. I am knee-deep. I am ankle-deep, and there's a horrible burning in my throat. I refuse to acknowledge that it might be a sob. I don't cry. I just don't. And especially not over men. Not after Sam.

"Leah?"

The voice startles me so badly that I almost fall back into the water just as my toes are touching dry sand. I look up to find Embry and heat rises to my face from the way he's looking at me. With pity. And of course he has probably had plenty of time to see the horrible range of painful expressions that have crossed my face as I made my way in. I feel myself become angry in defense.

"What are you doing here?"

I already know what. He's soaking wet and only in a pair of shorts. He's doing the same thing here that I am. Well, in a way.

"I—Well, I—"

The adam's apple in his throat bobs, and he looks from me, to the ocean, and back again. Like he wishes that he was still back there instead of witnessing my breakdown. I am already wishing I had let the waves take me out.

"What?"

I hate that he's stuttering. I want him to give me his dumb excuse, and I want out of this encounter right now.

Finally, he looks straight at me. "I saw you."

This was not the answer that I was expecting. My mouth works soundlessly for a moment before I realize that he must mean that he saw me cliff diving.

I swallow. "Yeah, you've seen me cliff dive before. Big deal."

He shakes his head, scattering drops of sea water from the long tendrils of his hair. He looks at the ocean and then back at me again.

"No, I saw you with—with Jake."

Now my face is on fire. I drop my hands to my sides, clench them into fists, but even that makes me feel defenseless. And, what am I going to do, swing at him for saying he saw me? I cross my arms over my chest. I feel more vulnerable than ever before, and I want to deny everything Embry says, but I wasn't being careful. I didn't know I was being watched, and every answer Embry needs has already flashed across my face. I am a neon sign in the dead of night.

I press my lips so tightly together that they start to hurt.

"I didn't mean to," Embry says, seeing that I am speechless. "I just—There was this—I mean, you guys smelled different, and I was out on patrol this morning. Really early. I swear I wasn't spying. As soon as I realized it was you guys, I took off for the cliffs."

I want to close my eyes and melt into the ground, but I am still here standing in front of Embry when I open them again. I lick my lips.

"Smelled different?" It was not what I meant to say.

I don't know why I even say it. Is that really what I'm concerned about in all of this?

Embry nods. "I could tell you were—I mean, I could tell it was intimate."

My face is broiling in flames. It's everything I can do not to look down at the sand in embarrassment. I'm not embarrassed. I refuse to be. If this is what I want, I can't hang my head because of it. Jacob is mine. Half-mine. And now someone else knows. It's like justification. Isn't it?

"But he imprinted," Embry says. "How was he with you too?"

I lift a shoulder and then let it drop. It smarts a little painfully, and I remember it's the shoulder that Jacob bit.

"It just happened," I say, because there's no point in lying to Embry now. "The imprint picks for you. Renesmee wasn't his choice."

"I didn't know you could fight it though."

"Me neither. But—sometimes he can."

Embry is the one that is embarrassed. He looks away from me. A look at him more openly while he isn't staring at me. He's holding his jaw in a strange way, as if there's something he wants to say but can't seem to. It's almost clenched.

"You can't tell anyone," I say.

Embry shakes his head.

"When you're a wolf—"

"I patrol alone a lot. I'll think of something else. I don't really want to revisit it anyway."

I think maybe this is my cue to leave, but now I can't.

"Am I horrible?"

This brings him back to me. He quirks a brow, like he's not sure what exactly I'm talking about. He almost looks humorous, but I can't think of anything funny about our current situation.

"I've never imprinted," he says.

"So?"

"So, I don't know how real it is. It doesn't seem fair though. I guess. For either person. If Jake wants—"

He's staring at me funny, and I feel every inch of my wet clothes sticking to me. My clothes. I don't even remember putting them on. Just a shirt and shorts. So flimsy with the breeze coming in off the ocean.

"It's just, I never would have guessed the pair of you would—Well, it's not my business, Leah."

I shake my head. I never would have expected it either. But it is so real now that I wonder how I'd never even wondered about him. I can still feel his hands on me. Thinking of the way he took my earlobe into his mouth makes my stomach quiver. Now Embry lifts both brows.

"If you keep getting turned on like that though, everyone's going to know."

I blow out a breath. "Fuck."

Embry laughs, and I laugh too, even though I don't really know why I do, except that it feels better than crying, which I might also do at any moment.

"At least you have someone," he says.

"Barely," I say. "You're lucky you don't."

"Really?"

Embry snorts and turns and starts walking away, and I follow him without knowing why or caring. It has started sprinkling rain while I wasn't paying attention. I imagine steam rising off of Embry's back.

"Yes, really. No one can hurt you."

"Is that better than being lonely?"

"Yes," I say, because I don't need time to consider it.

I've been lonely before. It's nothing compared to how I feel now, torn in two, because Jacob wants me, but not all of him wants me. In a way, I'm not the entire person that he needs. I'm only the answer to a small part of him. Even after last night, what do I know I will walk away from this with other than scars?

"Agree to disagree," he mutters.

I hope one day that he doesn't have to find out the hard way. I walk back to the road with him, and then he turns left, and I go right, and we part ways without saying anything else to each other. He's just a speck in the distance behind me when I realize that he's somehow comforted me.

()()()()

**JPOV**

I still taste Leah.

It's warring with the imprint the entire hike back to Renesmee. Half of me wants her, but the other half of me feels stronger with the taste of Leah crowding my senses. It is boosted by the fact that I've marked her, and part of my wolf has to acknowledge that mark. But now the voices in my head are even louder and more confusing. One can't completely drown out the other, as it could before. The ache of need is about to tear me in two. For once, it might actually be more for Leah.

For watching her run away from me. And, even though I knew where she was going, I couldn't follow her. She was on my mouth, on my hand, on me everywhere, and I couldn't even keep her from going. Because she had taunted the imprint. I had become the robot. I had gathered myself together, and I am now on my way back to Renesmee.

I want Leah so badly it threatens to cripple me.

But somehow the imprint keeps me moving, like the virus that it is. I'm not me. I'm more zombie than werewolf. I am at my house again, sliding open the glass door that leads from outside into the bedroom. The sheets are in disarray on the bed, but Renesmee isn't among them.

I go to the adjoining bathroom without pause, brush my teeth and wash my hands, and then I look up into the mirror over the sink and see that this mask isn't big enough. Leaves and other bits of the earth are in my hair. One side of my face is smudged with dirt. And the smell of her is so thick that I think any normal human could smell her. So I strip off and get in the shower. But it doesn't matter how hot the water gets or how much soap I lather on, I can't get rid of the smell.

"Jacob?"

_Jesus. _

I turn my back to the shower door. It's treated glass so that it's impossible to see more than my blurry outline through, but I've started to get hard, and I can't look at Renesmee right now.

_Mine. _My chest squeezes, because she's shut herself into the bathroom with me, and it doesn't take that long for her smell to fill the closed-in air too.

"Hey, Ness."

"Where were you?"

"Pack stuff," I say. "Seth wanted to know if I could pick up the last part of his patrol. I—uh—I had a hard time sleeping, so I decided to. I didn't want to wake you up though."

I chance a look over my shoulder. Nessie is standing in front of the shower door. There is the smudge of bronze curls and pale skin there to signify her presence. It looks like she's wearing a dress.

"I figured as much," she says. "I was a little worried though. Wake me next time."

"All right. I will."

"There was something I wanted to talk to you about too."

"Hmm?"

My heart starts to hammer as I watch her outline lift a blurred hand to one shoulder and then the other. I watched the color of her dress slide down her body to the floor. She reaches for the door before I can make an objection and slides in behind me. Her arms go around my waist. I can feel the two small swells of her breasts against my back. My whole world tilts, and I can feel my pulse in every part of my body. Then she slides around me, rubbing every inch of her against me until we are face to face. She's mainly under the spray of the shower head, and her hair is soaked flat against her in seconds.

All of my blood is going elsewhere while that suddenly-small-again part of me whimpers Leah's name. This isn't right. I know it's not right. I just made lo—My brain and imprint immediately reject the label. I just _fucked_ Leah only a few hours ago. She's all over me, and I—I want her, don't I? This, right now, isn't what I want.

"It can wait until after," Renesmee says.

She is at least a head shorter than me, but on her tiptoes she can almost have her own way. Her hand finds the back of my head, and I don't have a choice—not really—but to take her mouth against mine when she offers it. I suck in a breath through my nose as her taste mingles with Leah's. Longing fills me as Nessie lifts a leg and wraps it around me.


	7. Chapter 7 Have Mercy

**Author Notes: **I had several questions about Nessie being able to read Jake's mind. My main theory is that Jake's head is so messed up, she wouldn't be able to tell much if she did look. However, I meant to (I really thought I had) mention that Nessie and Jake have long since had an agreement that she wouldn't pry into his head. I also had several other questions, but I'm going to pretend like I didn't see those, because I don't want to ruin anything for you guys. ;)

* * *

**LPOV**

I'm walking circles around La Push, and it takes me over an hour to realize it. I pass the bait shop on the edge of town five times before I come up short and realize this isn't deja vu. The man that runs the shop is the age my father would be now if he were alive. His name is Stephen, and he's standing just outside the front door on my final pass. There is a man with him. It's Billy Black. I don't mean to freeze in the middle of the street like a criminal, but I do. I must look as terrified as I feel, because Stephen turns to see what the deal is when Billy, who has already spotted me, starts making a quizzical face.

"Leah, you all right?" Stephen says.

I don't know why seeing Jacob's dad unnerves me, but it does. It's not like he could possibly know what's going on between us, but Billy has always been a lot more perceptive than people give him credit for. I haven't seen him since before my business with Jake started, and I would have preferred to keep it that way. I try to swallow the strangled knot in my throat. I try several times before I think I can manage to talk.

"Yeah, fine. Just getting some exercise."

Am I stuttering? No, I don't stutter. It's just my imagination and guilty conscience. I hook my thumbs in the pockets of my shorts and shrug like it's no big deal.

"You sure?"

"Yeah," I say. "I've got to get home now."

I turn to go, but Billy hollers for me to wait up. It's all I can do not to bolt. I tell myself I must have an uncanny amount of willpower to stop and wait for Jacob's dad to catch up with me. I hear his chair crunching over gravel, but I don't look back. I take the time it takes for him to reach me to compose my face. I tell myself he doesn't know anything, and that I don't have anything to be ashamed of anyway. Why am I acting like the villain in this story? Jacob pursued me. I'm just trying to go with the natural flow of things. Jacob and me. Not Jacob and Renesmee. Surely even Billy can't be completely pleased with Jacob's imprint. No self-respecting Quileute could want a half-breed in his family. I know I have my faults, but even I am better than that. I run a hand through my hair and turn to face Billy.

"Have you seen Jake today?"

The question sends a flurry of commotion through my stomach. I try to be subtle about the deep breath I draw through my nose to even myself out, but Billy's face is devoid of scrutiny. He is smiling now. He suspects nothing while I am quickly recounting my last encounter with Jacob. My shoulder aches in a not entirely bad way, and I think about his mouth before remembering what Embry said about getting all worked up. Another deep breath inhales through my nose.

"No. What's up?"

I think of the way Jacob was staring at me when I woke up. Pensive, somber. Sexy, in a sort of depressing way now. Because we had just been together, and because his mind had already drifted away from me. I tell myself again that the mark has to mean something as my stomach ties itself into almost painful knots. I run a hand through my hair again, pushing it away from my face and alleviating some of the heat that has gathered in my cheeks. The sky is overcast, so I can't blame any hit of a blush on the sun. Billy still doesn't seem to notice anyway.

"I just came back from his place. He gave me some interesting news."

I try to act nonchalant, but my eyebrows lift of their own accord while I study Billy's face. There is a hint of something sly in his voice now, and maybe I wasn't looking closely enough at his smile that doesn't seem so normal now. What does he know? Did Jacob let something slip? I clear my throat and absolutely forbid myself to shift weight from one foot to the other—a sure sign of nerves.

"Oh yeah? What's that?"

Billy's smile shifts down a degree, and now he's quirking an eyebrow at me. A breeze is blowing through now that smells like rain. It's at my back and pushing toward Billy. I have to push my hair back from my face and hold it there with my hands to keep him in sight. I feel nerves gathering at the pit of my stomach. Someone's playing them like piano keys. Billy takes a breath, then another. Is he sniffing the air?

"You sure you haven't seen Jake today?"

I drop my hands to my sides so that my hair does blow into my face, because all the heat in my body has gathered there. It's been hours since I've seen Jake, and I tossed myself into the ocean between then and now. There's no way that Billy can smell Jake on me. No way. I look at him through the blowing strands of my black hair, but his expression is definitely speculative now. I should have pretended not to have heard him when he called for me. I should have went with my initial instinct to run. But it's too late now.

"Yeah. I'm sure."

There is a moment of silence while I feel like Billy is measuring me up. Then he shrugs, and the half-smile—horribly reminiscent of Jake—is back on his face.

"I'll let him tell you when he sees you then. Won't hold you up any longer. See you, Leah."

Billy heads back to the bait shop while I stand in the middle of the road torn between embarrassment and a sinking sense of foreboding. It's starting to rain, and I turn and start running against it and the wind, toward Jacob's house. I've walked enough circles around La Push to know that I can't outpace this. If I keep backing down, the imprint wins, and I lose Jake. He has to choose. He can't keep going back.

By the time Jake's house is in sight, I'm running through mud puddles because the rain is coming down heavier and the water is gathered and has no where to go. Sometimes I wonder how the rain in Forks and La Push hasn't washed us all away yet. I stumble through a third mud hole, gasping a bit, and I taste the air and know that Renesmee isn't here. So I go to the sliding glass door that leads directly into Jake's bedroom.

When I pull on the handle, it doesn't budge. My groan of annoyance is muffled by a rumble of thunder. I jiggled the handle in frustration until the blinds are drawn back, and Jacob is standing on the other side of the glass. My heart climbs immediately to my throat, threatening to choke me. Not only just from seeing Jacob standing there in a pair of pajama pants, but from the look on his face. The tension, the almost-frown, the line between his brows. He unlocks the door and slides it open but doesn't move out of my way.

"Leah, what are you doing here?"

I am soaked and panting from running. It takes me a few minutes to understand his question, and, when I do, my spine stiffens a little. He's never greeted me like this before, like my sudden appearance has riddled him with unease. I see him look over my shoulder and something inside of me hurts. I rub a hand over my chest. Why doesn't he want me here? Renesmee is gone.

"We need to talk," I say.

Something complex and pained ripples across Jake's face.

"Why are you making me stand out here?" I demand it.

A little rectangle of roof juts out over my head, but the rain is coming down sideways and chilling my legs. I feel like the dog left outside in the rain that no one wants to deal with bringing in. Since I don't know why exactly I'm being mistreated, I feel more hurt than anger. I want to be pissed that hurt is the dominant emotion. I want to be pissed that I feel weak and vulnerable and breakable right now.

"Nessie will be back soon."

He barely opens his mouth to say it, but I can hear it well enough anyway. It is enough to let the anger spill through, the sound of Jacob using Renesmee's pet name, signifying more intimacy than I care for. My breathing is too shallow. I think I might black out before I can swing a fist at his face. What's going on? We mated. He marked me last night. That means something, I know it does, but now he's talking to me like I'm a stranger? An intruder? My chest hurts, and I have to wonder if I'm having a heart attack. Something's not right here, and all my anxiety is multiplying from my encounter with Billy.

What's the news? I want to ask, but I don't think I can. I step forward, take a breath, and smell Renesmee all over him. The growl that rumbles up from the pit of my stomach and erupts from my mouth is not my own. No, no, no. Jacob is my mate. It's not possible that he—That she—That right after our night together, he came back here and—

"Move!"

I lift my hands and shove against his chest hard enough to knock him back a few steps so that I can get inside. I push past him into his bedroom and nearly gag on the smell of Renesmee. It takes me a few minutes to realize that I'm breathing ragged and loud while choking on the stench.

"Leah, wait—"

There is no way that Jacob and Renesmee—What about marking me? What about last night? After all the bullshit about wanting to be with me! I whirl on him, and he actually has the decency to look maybe almost afraid.

"What are you doing?"

I hadn't realized that I'd grabbed a little glass figurine off of his chest of drawers, but now I feel its weight in my hand as his gaze drops to it. It's not his. I've been in Jake's room enough times before to know that this is one of Renesmee's additions. I tighten my hand hard enough around it to hurt.

"After—You came back here and...and... _slept_ with her?" I want to gag on the word, and it is the most detached one I could even manage.

"No!" He takes a few steps toward me, and I lift the glass thing over my head, causing him to throw up his hands. "No, no, Leah, that's not what it was like."

"Not what it was like?" I almost scream it.

The pain in my chest is numbing. I want to hurt him now while agony is ripping through my body. My mate. I have been delusional. He is not mine. He belongs to the imprint. He was never strong enough to fight it, and, again, I'm the loser in this fight.

I scream when I throw it, and Jacob ducks his head just in time. Whatever it was, it shatters on the wall behind him. I don't know what's keeping me from turning into the wolf, but it is a thin line holding me back from shredding this whole place. I want everything to be broken as me.

"Leah, stop!" Jacob waves his hands in front of him. "I didn't—You've got the wrong idea altogether. Nothing happened!"

But I don't hear him. My attention has been drawn to something glinting off of his hand. A ring. A silver band on his ring finger. I think, all of a sudden, that I'm going to throw up.

()()()()

**JPOV**

My head starts throbbing with Renesmee wrapped around me. Even though she's kissing me, the quieter voice is getting louder again. While I'm responding to her, I'm thinking of Leah. It's physical pain, this need. It feels like my ribs are crunching my lungs, like needing Renesmee and not wanting her at the same time is strangling me. I don't know how I manage to bring my hands to her shoulders, push her back a step. I keep my eyes on her face to keep from unraveling.

"What?" There is a smile that fades when she sees my expression.

I let go of her, because I think it might be enough to convince her to break our rule about her not reading my mind. I wonder if I look as guilty as I feel. I try to rearrange it into something closer to tired and harmless. Something that doesn't look like I was in this shower trying to wash off the woman that I really want, that doesn't give away the way I was almost mourning soaping her off my skin.

"I—"

I'm thinking about Leah in the woods, and, for a minute or two, it's stronger than the usually dominant imprint. It was just us in the woods. I had almost been just me for an hour. Tasting her mouth while she let me in. Her legs wrapped around me, her voice sighing my name. The shower is pelting me in the back of the neck, and it's starting to hurt. It draws me out of the thoughts that can betray me.

"I'm exhausted. I only slept an hour before I left you last night. I'm sorry."

The smile comes back. I'm off the hook. She believes me so easily that I should feel more guilty about lying. But I don't. She just shrugs, and she looks beautiful standing there in front of me, naked and wet, but some part of me feels detached. And it's the first time I haven't ever been almost doubled over with want, with that voice in my head that always whispers, _mine. _Did last night change me more than I thought?

"It's okay," she says. "Come on. You smell clean enough. I have something for you."

I'm so taken with the idea that I might actually be close to freedom, to finding who I am again, that I follow her out of the shower, take the towel next to the one she grabs. We dry off in silence. I put on sleeping pants, and she puts back on the dress I saw fall to the floor.

"What is it?" I ask, because she's staring at me expectantly when we're done.

I try not to be too dismayed that something in me warms at the sight of her barely stifled excitement, that I'm still responding to her happiness. But I can take it, can't I? In exchange for that sliver more of freedom that lets me hold Leah in my mind even right now.

"Well, the other night at that dinner at Sue's, it got me thinking," she says. "I know it's not the way this usually goes, but since my aging is so crazy, and sometimes I wonder if anyone really sees me as an adult, I—I got this from my dad. It's a part of our family."

There is a pocket sewn into her dress, and she pulls something small, cylinder, and silver out of it. She holds it up to me, and I stare at it without really seeing.

"What—?"

"I just—I mean, I want to get married, Jake. That's where we're headed eventually anyway, right? And I want you to have this ring. I—I love you."

My brain empties and then refills. Something tightens around my neck. A chain? A leash? I thought I was choking before, but now I'm suffocating. The world tilts, shakes, realigns. I'm the moon that orbits around her planet. I'm her puppet, her pet. She _loves _me. Nothing else could have broken me so completely.

The imprint comes ferociously back to life.

()()()()

**LPOV**

"W-What is that?" My voice is strangled. It's not much more than a squeak.

Jacob's face actually looks like it gets two shades paler. He doesn't drop his hands but stands looking at them like they're foreign to him as well.

"Are you—Are you getting married?"

Again, I gag. My stomach heaves ferociously, and I think I might actually lose everything, but somehow I stay intact. I wish I could break apart. I wish I'd let myself be carried out by the cold ocean water earlier today. This can't be happening. Not now. Especially not after last night.

"I—I—Leah, please."

Jacob looks sick now too, but all I can do is wish that I had something else to throw. I wouldn't miss this time. The sickness and pain is overruled by anger, my old friend. Anger—the easiest emotion to fall back on to save me. I stumble forward, take his hand, and pull the ring free. I wave it in his face.

"This isn't real!"

He looks at it like a dying man, like I am his executioner. Like he's resigned himself to all of it. _No. _I won't let him. I won't let him get away with it so easily. Giving up is easy. And if I don't get the easy way, then neither does he.

"If she's what you really want, then come and get it!"

I shove past him and run back out into the rain.


	8. Chapter 8 Stand Where I Stood

**Author Notes: ** So this update took way too long to get out. My excuses are work and grad school, but I am still really sorry for how long this took. I will try not to keep you guys waiting that long again, but you know how life goes. It gets crazy. Anyway, thanks for sticking with me!

* * *

I stumble around in the woods for at least an hour. Jacob doesn't show up, and an agonized piece of my soul isn't surprised. It's the end of that hour before I realize that I'm sobbing, that the horrible choking, gasping sound I'd thought was coming from somewhere else—something else—is coming from me. My face is wet from the rain water that finds its way through the canopy of trees. There are no tears to mingle there. Maybe that's why I'm making such a horrible sound, because I am so hollow I can't really cry. My head feels swollen and painful, because I can't breathe.

Because I can't believe that he didn't come, that, after everything, he has chosen her. What does that make me? Nothing. I am nothing. And nothing never hurt worse than this. I need a release. I need something to hold on to before I sink so far into despair that I will never be able to climb free again. Everything hurts too much. Though my body is its own furnace, I actually feel cold inside and out. My clothes are so soaked that they might as well not even be there for what protection they offer.

Why am I walking in the rain? Why have I waited a whole hour for him to prove me wrong? I am a fool. I told Embry. I told Embry it was better to be alone than have the capacity to hurt this much. I am so tired that my sobs give way to pitiful, dry hiccups, and I don't even both pushing branches out of the way as I cut a path as far away from Jacob's house as possible. Those branches whip cruelly at my face and arms, but I barely feel them.

I will myself to feel nothing, and I am so focused on achieving that small measure of peace that I don't really think about where I am going. I see light glowing through windows first—distant, warm beacons that wink into sight through the trees. As I reach the edge of the forest, a whole house swims into view through the downpour. Embry's house is built on the farthest outskirt of La Push, a thirty minute drive from Jacob's.

I have only been here a few times, as Embry usually comes to town when he's needed, and I've never dealt with him for much more than pack reasons. But I know that he lives alone, and I know that tonight isn't his patrol, so he must be here, and the light in the windows assures me that I'm correct. I slosh through his yard, careless of the puddles I splash through, but I notice that I'm no longer wearing shoes. I have a vague recollection of kicking them off after running from Jacob's house.

I still have Jacob's ring clutched in my now-numb hand. Because I don't know what else to do with it—because I thought for sure he would have come after it, and I wouldn't have to make this choice—I loop it through the necklace I'm wearing as I climb onto Embry's porch. It hangs heavy and cold between my breasts.

I swallow the last of my hiccups, raise a hand, and bang a fist against the door. There is a moment of pause, and then I hear movement inside the house. Embry doesn't bother peeking through a nearby window to see who's there. I doubt he's afraid of being robbed or any such thing. He's a strong wolf. Instead, he comes right to the door, opens it, and stares at me. I can't tell if he's surprised to see me.

"How long have you been outside?" he asks.

I think it's a weird question to ask, so I just shrug.

"Come on. I've got a fire going."

He moves back and holds the door open for me. I step inside obediently and follow him to the living room. The inside of his house is small, but it feels cozy—especially with the fire burning in the fireplace. There is only one worn love seat and a recliner. I sit on the love seat and wait as he takes a poker and adjusts a few logs. He doesn't say anything, but I am surprised when he takes a seat next to me instead of on the recliner.

He clasps his hands together in front of him and leans with his elbows on his knees. We watch the logs shift and shoot a few sparks into the air before he turns his head just enough to look at me. He's not smiling or frowning. He simply looks contemplative, like he's sizing me up. I don't feel awkward, and I don't look away from his gaze. I feel like some sort of understanding has passed between us.

"Why did you come here?"

"I—" I shrug. "I don't know."

"Am I supposed to be your rebound?"

I stare hard at him for a few moments and wonder when Embry became so perceptive. Is that why I'm here? I don't know. I thought I only came to tell him that he was wrong, that nothing is worse than being in love, that I wish I could swap places with him and be the one that's alone. I open my mouth to say something, but I feel my insides struggle to come up with the best way to word what I want to say. It seems important that he not get himself into the same mess.

"You were wrong," I say, lamely.

"Yeah? How so?"

I fold my arms across my chest miserably. I want to look anywhere but at his face, because I am starting to feel the humiliation of knowing that Jacob didn't choose me, but I hold his gaze.

"Nothing's worth this pain."

Embry shakes his head. "Really? If your skin was as cold and untouched as mine, you might feel different."

"No," I say. "Everything aches. I just wish I couldn't feel anything."

Embry raises his brows. "Is that why you're here then? You want me to be the rebound, to help you not feel?"

I scowl. "I don't need help."

"It's fine. I don't care to be. I told you I was lonely," he says, as if he didn't hear me. I don't think he did hear me, or maybe he doesn't care. "I know I'm not your first pick, but I think I'm okay with that. It would just be nice to feel something, and you smelled good, you know, earlier. I was thinking about it."

I don't know what to say, I am so surprised by this. I am surprised by his words, but also by the way that he's looking at me. Before, we shared nothing more than glances. Right now, he's looking at me in the hungry sort of way I recognize from all of my encounters with Jake. But there's no one else appealing to him right now besides me. I'm the only one reflected in his gaze. My chest squeezes in surprise and…and want? I want to be needed for something so basic, and just me. I want to not feel Jake in every corner of my soul.

He was with Renesmee right after me. He was wearing her ring. I don't want to be Leah Clearwater anymore. I just want to be a body fulfilling a need. Embry's eyes are dark on me. I think I feel my body responding. Those eyes widen slightly, trail down my body and then back up to my face. He draws in a deep breath.

"Yeah, that smell. I like it."

I don't know what to say. My tongue has swollen in my throat. A horrible, dark part of my heart wants revenge against Jake. He can't make me his mate and then tell me I'm nothing. I can be just as uncaring. I lick my lips.

"You're soaking the leather," Embry says, referring to the love seat we are sharing.

I forgot we were even sitting down. Something has changed in the air. Embry's scent is stronger and thicker. I draw in a shaky breath as he stands and pulls me to my feet. He takes off his own clothes, and then he undresses me, because I've found that I can't move. All I can do is stare at his body and the way the fire colors and warms his skin. I've seen his body before, but now I am noticing other things about it: how strong, solid, and sturdy it appears. As he pulls my shirt over my head and tosses it to the floor, I reach out and touch his chest. This stills him. He draws in a deep breath.

"Go ahead," he says.

I run my hand up and trace his collarbone. His breathing is deep and even. He watches my face, but I watch my hand. I move to his face, run the expanse of his jaw line down to his throat. I can feel his pulse. It's fast. I start to lean in to kiss him, but he stops me by pulling back just slightly.

"That's not what this is about, Leah. You don't want me like that, so let's not pretend. You want to forget Jacob, and I want to feel. Let me help you."

He eases me to the floor, and I am so mesmerized by this person that I don't think I ever knew, that I do whatever his hands guide me to do. I'm on my back on the rug in front of the fire place. He urges my legs apart, but then stops.

"You know he'll come looking for you eventually, right? And he'll be pissed."  
I shake my head. "I don't care."

I tell myself I don't, that I won't. It'll serve him right. Let him know how it feels to be second. Embry leaves it at that. I feel the tip of him press me and then slide in, and I inhale sharply.

"I don't want gentle," I say, surprising myself.

Embry snorts. "Yeah, me neither."

()()()

I'm on my back still. Embry rests between my legs, his head on my chest. He's not sleeping, but we've gone a long time without speaking after the last of our mingled moans faded away. I feel spent and dry and hollow, but I think this is preferable. I know what I've done is wrong, that it couldn't possibly make things right, but I don't think that I regret it. I needed the release, and so did Embry. There are no feelings between us, just contentment.

I run my hand through his hair without really thinking, and I feel him tense against me for a moment before relaxing. I forget that this action is an intimate one, but it's comforting to me, and I don't stop. He doesn't object to this intimacy, so I don't worry about it. He shifts his weight slightly, and his fingers trace up and down my side.

"He's going to kill me, you know."

My hand stills in his hair. "He doesn't care."

"Yeah, he does."

I look down at the top of Embry's head and frown. "How do you know?"

I feel him shrug against me. "He cheated on his imprint for you."

"It doesn't mean anything."

The hollowness has climbed into my voice. I sound older and weather-worn. I don't like it, but at least I'm not sobbing like I was an hour ago. At least I'm not that pathetic still. Embry keeps tracing my side.

"It does. He'll probably kick my ass."

"I'll leave before he comes looking," I say, though I still don't believe he will.

"Won't matter," Embry says, and it doesn't sound like he cares. "He'll smell me on you."

Something in Embry's tone sounds like he's gloating, but I can't see his face to tell if I'm right.

"Do you regret this then?" I say. "Are you scared of him?"

"No."

He shifts again, and this time I feel his tongue graze my nipple. I quiver as he draws it into his mouth and teases it roughly with his teeth. I clench his hair in my hand and arch my hips. He releases a soft growl against me, and it feels like my skin is vibrating, waking up again with more need.

"Want to go again?" he says, as he releases me.

It takes me a minute to catch my breath, but then I squirm to get out from underneath him.

"No," I say, in a choked voice. "No, that's it. I've got to go before he does come looking. This isn't your problem, Embry. And it's fucked up enough. I probably—I know I shouldn't have."

"Well, if you need it again, you know where to find me."

He rolls away to allow me to gain my feet. My hands are shaking as I retrieve my clothes and put them on, but Embry makes no similar move to get dressed. He just watches me. I wonder if he knew I'd come find him like this, out of anger and need. I don't think he cares what the reason was. I wonder if he's done this sort of thing before.

"See you, Embry."

"Later, Leah."

()()()

**JPOV**

I know I waited too long to chase after Leah. By the time I'd started, her trail ran cold in the pouring rain. I circled around town, looking for her, before going to her house. But I'd known she wasn't there before I'd even knocked on the door. I know I shouldn't have let her leave. But the ring—My chest tightens with anxiety. Where is she? Hours have past while I have sat on her porch waiting. The longer it goes without her reappearance, the more apprehensive I become.

Where could she have gone?

I am starting to wonder if she ran away completely when I finally catch a whiff of her. It rolls in against me on a damp breeze, and then I see her coming down the road, barefoot. I stand up, starting to call out to her, but then the breeze rolls in again, pressing heavy against my face, and I smell—

I feel all the blood draining from my head, and a buzzing starts in my ears. I know I didn't say anything, but Leah stops in the middle of the road and looks up at me abruptly. Even from here, I can see the panic on her face.

Even from here, I can smell Embry all over her.


	9. Chapter 9 Catch Me if You Can

**Author Notes: **Thanks for all the wonderful reviews, guys. Sorry I haven't replied to all of them, but know that they mean the world to me. You're all a wonderful bunch, and I'm fortunate. I hope you continue to enjoy the story!

* * *

I stop dead in my tracks as I catch sight of Jacob on my porch. I really hadn't expected him to come looking for me. His absence until this moment had convinced me that he was done with us. He hadn't come after me. At least, not soon enough. A few moments passes while we do nothing but stare at one another, and I can feel Embry's hands all over my body. I can feel his scent sticking to me like glue, and I know from the way that Jacob is looking at me that he must smell it too. He has no right to judge me, but this isn't how I wanted him to find out.

Did I want him to find out? I lift my arms and fold them over my chest. I want to think of something to say to tell him that it serves him right, but he looks so completely blindsided that my voice fumbles in my throat. I try to find some semblance of guilt, but there is none. I can only remember what feels like too few hours ago when he wouldn't let me into his house, and I stood in the pouring rain. Who is the forlorn dog on the porch now?

I stand up straighter, jut my chin into the air.

"What?"

He blinks in response and draws himself up to full height. He looks surprised that this is the first thing I have to say—no explanation for myself, no reasoning away why every inch of my body smells of Embry Call. I think of Embry as I left him: naked and stretched out on his floor, content, fearless of Jacob's wrath. I think he should maybe be slightly worried as the darkest scowl I've ever seen crosses Jacob's face, and he turns and stomps up to my front door.

But he doesn't stop there. Both of his arms shoot out, and my front door swings open, though I know I locked it. There is an unmistakable crack as he busts it off of its hinges. He disappears inside without the slightest hint of shame.

"What the _hell_!" I stumble forward and then run to catch up with him. "What the hell, Jacob? That was my door!"

I can feel his anger radiating off of him, even though I'm several steps behind and he's made it to the living room before I've caught up with him. He stands facing away from me, and though he's wearing a t-shirt, I can almost see the muscles of his back bunching together. I know what he means that he's tensed like this, that his anger is so thick in the room I can taste it, but I don't care about the warning signs. What right does he have to be angry at me when he agreed to marry Renesmee? How dare he barge into my house and try to make me feel guilty!

"Get out!"

More of the muscles in his back bunch together, and his head tilts down.

"I said, get out! You have no right!"

He swings around. His face is shadowed with rage, but it almost looks like he's going to laugh—like he's going to laugh at what I have to say in my defense.

"No right? You-!" He swings his right arm into the air, one finger jabbing in my direction. It shakes there for a few seconds as he struggles with what I can only imagine must be his best attempt at the worst insult in his head. "You _fucked_ Embry!"

It grates against me, like he's dragging nails across a chalk board. I grit my teeth hard and feel my own primal sort of anger burn to life in my gut. Really? That is my heinous crime when he sleeps in the same bed as Renesmee? Was wearing her ring on his finger? And I have no right to give my body to whoever I want to?

I step forward and wave my own finger. "You're going to _marry_ her!"

He winces against the word, but his fury shows no sign of ebbing. "You didn't even let me explain. You just ran off to some idiot's bed!"

The agony of loving Jacob boils over inside of me. Every ounce of pain, every secret pool of anger and despair. I think that he can't possibly imagine how much it hurts to love him—to love anyone that only half-loves in return. I will never be his number one, his only one. He cares for me only as far as his imprint will let him, and standing next to her, I'm nothing at all. He would marry her and let me live in this hell forever. I want to lash out at him. I want to throw things. I want to transfer all of my feelings into him. I don't want to be his play thing anymore.

"At least he knows my name!"

I shout it, because I want it to hurt more. I can see his jaw work as he grits his teeth.

"At least when he was fucking me there was no confusion as to who I was!" I keep going. I can't stop until he knows what it's like to harbor this gaping wound.

"At least we could go out in public together, and he could hold my hand, and he could kiss me! At least there wasn't a moment of indecision where every inch of his body was repelled by me! At least I wasn't his second choice!"

"You're not my second choice!" Jacob says.

"Don't lie to me!" I cross the room, rest my hands against his chest, and shove him. He stumbles back. "Don't tell me things that aren't true anymore. Don't make me believe what's never going to happen!"

I shove him again and again until his back hits the wall.

"Leah, stop!"

I sense the aura of anger in the room reaching a climax. It's all around us, clogging my throat, burning my brain red. But I can't stop. I've had enough of all the weeks I've lived in secret loving Jacob to get nothing in return, nothing substantial.

"You're an asshole! You brought me into this just to torture me, you leach-loving prick! I hate you! I'll go back to Embry every night until I die before I spend one more day with you!"

"Leah!" Jacob warns me.

"Go ahead! Do it! I'd love nothing more than to kick your ass!" I say it, and I mean it, because I know what's coming next.

I shove Jacob one more time, and the tension snaps. I don't know which one of us is a wolf first, but we phase so quickly and violently that I don't even realize that I am the wolf until we're grappling on the ground and rolling. Teeth-bared, jaws snapping. Nothing registers in my brain except the fury that I must release. We land on my coffee table, shattering it. We knock over vases and side tables and lamps. Things all around us are breaking and snapping like twigs.

_Go ahead. Break everything else I have. It doesn't matter, _I say.

_Leah, I don't want—_

I swipe at his head with my paw, barely missing his eye. He growls, lunges, and we're rolling, jumping and running again. He runs out of the front door when he gains his feet again, and I follow, tackling him to the ground again just as he gets off my porch. I snap at his neck, but he holds me off with both paws.

I am so angry that I can't reach this vulnerable spot that I do the only other thing I know to do that will hurt and weaken him. I think of us. I bombard him with images from the beginning, when he first showed up on my porch, until I ran from his house in the rain. I force all of the pain I felt into his head.

_I loved you. I loved you._ I'm whining despite myself, because it aches even though I am doing it just to torture him. It is my heartbreak all over again. My thoughts travel all the way until I am walking toward Embry's house and have just caught it in sight and am thinking that I need someone else who knows some sort of pain as I do, and then Jacob stops me.

_Enough! _

He rolls and pins me by the shoulders, effectively recreating the moment in the woods where he dominated and marked me so much so that I stop moving immediately. I feel it again—whatever it was out there in the woods—that aching, carving need and sense of possession. He is mine. We are mates. This is how things were meant to be.

I push it at him, all of it. I want him to feel what I feel right now, think what I think. I want him to feel our connection deeper and more intricately than he's ever felt his imprint. I want him to hold my heart and know what it feels like to really love someone—not because you want to, because there is no choice for me either, but because it was the natural way. I fell. I have fallen. I am hopeless and weak and aching for him. I watch Jacob's massive, russet-colored chest shudder.

_I feel it, _he says. _I feel it. _

_ It hurts. _

_ I don't want to hurt you. _

We're human again and naked and wrapped in each other's arms. I feel my whole body shuddering, like I might be crying, but I just hold onto Jacob and bury my face in his chest. He strokes my hair.

"I'm sorry," he says. "I'm so sorry. I don't want it to be like this."

He coaxes my face up to his, and we kiss. It is a desperate, pleading kiss. I know what I'm asking for, but I don't know what he wants. I want to know. I want to be all of whatever it is. I dig my fingers into his back and want to be as real as he is.

"Jacob, I—"

"Holy fuck!"

Both of us freeze. In the heat of our fight, we were oblivious to the sound of a truck pulling up, but I see it now, parked next to the side of my house. It's my brother's red pickup, and I see his lawnmower in the back.

_He picks now? _I think. _Now to make up for putting it off for a month? _

Jacob and I are naked and twined together and sucking face, and I can only imagine what my brother must be thinking as he stands several feet away and gawks at us—his sister, who he must have thought would be a spinster, and his alpha, who had very clearly imprinted on someone else.

"Seth," Jacob says, in a choked voice.

I feel my face burn with embarrassment. Seth is looking everywhere but directly at us. He keeps running his hand through his hair, shaking his head.

"Wow, I mean, just wow. That is the most—That is so—Holy _fuck_." He keeps repeating himself, apparently too dumbfounded to think to leave.

Jacob climbs to his feet, and I sit up. I don't know what else to do but to try and cover myself with my hands and arms. My clothes are shredded on my living room floor.

"Seth, we need to talk," Jacob says.

He starts to step forward, but Seth flings his hands out in front of him.

"Whoa! Whoa. Just stop. Maybe put on some pants first, okay?"

()()()

**JPOV**

I sit in Leah's kitchen, across the table from her brother. Seth continues to do everything he can besides looking at my face. I think he might be in shock, but I don't immediately know how to handle this, or what I should say. I think to say sorry, but I'm not. I'm not sorry that I want to be with his sister, or that I like the feel of her body against mine.

When she had shown up smelling of Embry—I am going to murder him, I decide, at the next available opportunity—I had felt it like a knife. She is mine, my mate. I can't bear the idea of anyone else touching her. I can't bear the idea of losing her. I know this is selfish. I know I am horrible, because I am the one with the imprint.

Which is why I have to find a way to speak to her brother right now. I clear my throat, and Seth finally decides to look at me. I want to tell him that I love his sister, but it chokes in my throat. I am more free than I was when Leah and I started out, but this word still hangs in my throat like barbed wire. I feel the imprint repelling it. I feel the imprint burning me like a branding iron just for thinking it. But I felt Leah's feelings as a wolf. I relived our history through her head. And part of me—the real me—was jarred loose. I can feel it. I am so much closer to being me again, and I need Leah.

I open my mouth, but Seth speaks first.

"You have an imprint."

I frown. "Yeah."

"That's all you have to say?"

The shock is ebbing away. Seth is starting to look like he might be angry with me now that he can feel something other than embarrassment at having caught us naked. I don't blame him. I don't blame the accusation in his tone.

"What the hell are you doing with my sister? I mean, how is that even—?"

He trails off, looking at me pointedly, but I don't know how to answer, because I don't know how it's possible. I don't know how to explain anything that has been happening in my life in the past weeks.

"I—" I swallow the barbed wire. "I want to be with her."

Seth isn't having an easy answer. "What about Renesmee?"

I look away now. "That wasn't my choice."

"But you're still _with_ her."

"I'm trying to break it, okay?"

"No, it's not okay. Why are you doing this to Leah?"

I look back at him, and now the shock is completely gone. In defense, he seems to have settled on anger, protectiveness. I want to tell him how badly I feel for using Leah. But I don't feel bad. I want Leah. The real me wants Leah. I don't know how to explain this to him though.

"I'm not trying to hurt her."

"Do you love her?"

The question is like a slap, because it's the one that I truly can't answer. I open my mouth, but nothing comes out. It's worse than barbed wire—it's a throat full of glass, it's quicksand filling up my lungs. I struggle to say it anyway. This is my body, my voice, my heart. I love her. Can't I say it? Can't I break this curse once and for all? Especially after today, seeing how easily I could lose her to someone else? I suck in a breath and try to force it out. My whole body aches. My bones feel brittle and breakable.

"You can't even say it."

"I'm trying. I—"

I stop at the sound of someone running down the stairs from the second story—where Leah's bedroom is, where she went to get dressed. I hadn't heard her come down, but the footfall starts halfway down and runs from the house. Was she listening? I feel my heart squeeze, shove to my feet, and go to the window. Seth is right next to me. We watch Leah run from the house, disappear into the woods.

"Where is she going?" I say out loud.

Seth says nothing for a long second. "She heard us. She must know now that you can't love anyone other than Renesmee. You're stuck, Jacob. It's your imprint. She might as well know now. I can't believe you'd do this to her in the first place. You think, you know, after Sam, you'd have a little respect."

"You don't know anything about this," I say, and I'm out of the house and running too.

I won't let her run away again. I need her. I'll prove it.

* * *

**Author Notes: **Ask for Seth, and Seth you shall receive. ;)


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